I would really like to hear specific instances from the community members and not some sales speak from a partner (unless you are commenting on the processes and not specifically your solution). If you are not a partner and had great luck with a product, that is OK. That means a little bit more to me.

Here's the situation:

We have a conventional old-timey backup solution right now where we use Ultrabac (raise your hand if you've heard of that, and no, if you work for Ultrabac, you don't count) to back up our data to an 8-slot LTO-2 autoloader.

It's a mostly typical setup...

Weekend: Jobs run from Friday night until around Sunday afternoon. A full backup is around 1.5 TB

Nightly: A nightly backup might be around 600Gb or so. Incrementals run daily, and will sometimes finish in the late morning early afternoon. The odd factor here is that we do run some Windows Server Backups going directly to disk, then to tape for some boxes due to the fast nature of the VSS snapshotting - AND I don't have to do linear backups with ultrabac (explaining the larger size of Incremental backups in relation to the weekend job).

MS SQL backups are performed directly to disk via maintenance plans, then picked up by the tape job.

Some problems:

Restore times are a bitch - Our main FTP repository for our EMR images/records is about 200Gb. The overall size here isn't the issue, but the quantity and size of individual files which is the problem. The folder (a single folder btw) contains over 1.5 million TIFF images *thank you eClinicalWorks for a top-notch development job*, and a file-by-file backup takes FOREVER...it's even worse when performing restoration tests. As a result, I've taken to using Windows Server Backup (on Server 2008 R2) to back this system up using the built-in VSS capabilities. This reduces the time to process that server down to 2 hours instead of half a day or more.

MySQL Backups aren't to my liking: Our EMR database is MySQL, so we are currently snapshotting our SAN, mounting that snapshot, backing up the data, then destroying the snap. The software doesn't seem to support backing up our current version of MySQL using native backup commands.

Too many interfaces: The biggest issue here is that I am managing Ultrabac and a klunky incremental system along with Windows Server Backup on various machines. Definitely not a smooth way to do things.

Tape jobs are linear: The other issue is the fact that our backup sets run in linear fashion - no surprise there. But this can cause a problem as sometimes a backup set can take longer than normal, causing the subsequent sets to start later, which can interfere with production during the day.

Some of our other servers, like Exchange, I am using Windows Server Backup to do for the job, simply for the performance reasons. However, I have not successfully restored to a bare-metal instance using WSB.

It's a small window, after all: We have a short rotation of backups: I want the capability of having a larger window of restore times without just simply adding more weeks of tapes. Using dedup technology, I should have the capability of going much farther back in time, right?

location 4: remote Physical Therapy site to site VPN connected via public Internet

We do have a LeftHand SAN at location 1, but our space is pretty much occupied by our production data with some room for growth on the thin-provisioned volumes.

I have a 1.7TB MSA 500 which is used for remote snapshotting capabilities at location 3.

I have a 2TB system that is a repository for my WSB data which could be repurposed for anything at location 1.

Location 4 I probably shouldn't have mentioned as it is small potatoes. No real consistent connection and no hardware there to be useful.

My desire (does this make sense):

I would like to have a device on-site that could replicate to another like our SAN (or use additional SAN storage?). And, the following capabilities:

Back up entire servers virtual or physical for bare-metal restore to either a virtual or physical machine

The appliance should keep an entire history of backups for a year, obviously taking advantage of dedup technology. Have the capability of offloading last years backups to low-cost storage

Weekend jobs could still be sent to tape, but is not absolutely a necessity, pending the above desire is met. It would be nice to have this capability, however

The management/backup software should be part of the solution, but is not totally necessary. If the cost of a decent bit of software plus the appliances is a better fit, then so be it. As long as we have a single console to work from and we aren't relying on linear backups going to a single tape device(!).

Exchange and SQL 2000-2008 backup and restore capabilities

Licensing should be based on how much, not what kind of data we are backing up.

We should be able to connect any kind of storage we wish, be it via iSCSI or direct-attached if we see fit.

So some questions:

What ballpark cost are we talking for 1.5Tb full weekend backups with a long-term retention capability and some of the features above? My problem here is that we spend hardly anything for our current software, and I want to get an idea of what a real solution SHOULD cost, so I can budget properly.

If we have a LeftHand P4000, should we leverage that more since it has built in syncing capabilities?

If we use our own storage, then the dedup task would fall onto the backup software, correct?

13 Replies

Have you considered mirrored virtualization? From what I understand from friends that love virtualization way too much there are some pretty wicked options with VMware. I'd be more than glad to point you their way, think their user name on here is Synthetic Development on here. Not trying to do a sales pitch, just know they know their stuff and know they are always talking some space age virtual stuff when we hit up the bar. Hope this helps to some degree.

Wow Rob, well thought out and detailed - wish more posts were like this.

Here is my take on this:

I hate tape - It plain just sucks. It's slow, like you said, linear and restoration is a huge pain.

For my setup, I went with disk storage, copied to external HDDs for offsite. We have pretty much what you have minus the exchange.

I setup a 4TB disk array to backup about 1.5TB of total data.

We use Acronis - about $400 a server (8 servers). Here is what I like about it:

Dedup is built-in

Centralized Control Panel

Multiple Vault Locations

Remote Access

Email notifications

Multiple backup methods (GFS, Hanoi Tower, Etc...)

Ability to retain for extended periods

Here is what I am changing in our current setup:

We recently purchased 2 X 12TB ReadyNas devices. I am attaching them to our file server via iSCSI. One is going into our location across the street (fiber connection) and I will replicate to the other ReadyNAS. They support VM and Hyper V, and Acronis supports it as well.

With iSCSI mounting available, we can shoot VSS directly to the ReadyNAS.

So I am moving my backup vaults to the ReadyNAS which will allow me to go well over a year. I will still use the external HDDs for safety deposit box monthly off sites.

Acronis doesn't do anything that other solutions won't do, but it simply makes everything so much easier to manage. In fact, I rarely even look at the control panel anymore, as notifcations tell me everything I need to know. Once I set it all up, it was set it and forget it.

I have had to restore single files and once had to restore an entire server. All with no issues.

I'm sorry but I don't have many suggestions but I will say this. That was one of the best questions posted I've seen in a long time. Very complete so we can think of options without asking many more questions.

With that said however I do have one question. Have you thought of online backups? It seems with the kind of bandwidth you have between the offices it might be an option. It all depends on your internet pipe Online backups are constantly "syncing" so it's almost a realtime backup. You then don't have to manage the infrastructure you describe and the restore time should be a heck of a lot faster. You can do what you're wanting regarding the static backups for the year. I don't know about backing up the mySQL stuff though. You would probably have to do what you're doing now with the database maintenance an then backup the dumped file.

I currently don't have that much data to backup but when I did I had all my data on a SAN and that SAN did a snap. Then I was able to do the static tape backup anytime. I could have done the static backup to another storage device if I wanted but I already had the tape infrastructure so I was going to use it until it wasn't feasable anymore.

Have you considered mirrored virtualization? From what I understand from friends that love virtualization way too much there are some pretty wicked options with VMware. I'd be more than glad to point you their way, think their user name on here is Synthetic Development on here. Not trying to do a sales pitch, just know they know their stuff and know they are always talking some space age virtual stuff when we hit up the bar. Hope this helps to some degree.

Hmmm, not too much, although we have a couple low-criticality VMWare ESXi boxes, the heft of our Virtualization is in Hyper-V. I'd be curious as to what solutions exist to handle Hyper-V specifically. 2/3rds of our servers are virtualized.

Bigfoot wrote:

...Have you thought of online backups? It seems with the kind of bandwidth you have between the offices it might be an option. It all depends on your internet pipe Online backups are constantly "syncing" so it's almost a realtime backup. You then don't have to manage the infrastructure you describe and the restore time should be a heck of a lot faster. You can do what you're wanting regarding the static backups for the year. I don't know about backing up the mySQL stuff though. You would probably have to do what you're doing now with the database maintenance an then backup the dumped file.

We had weighed a couple options/scenarios and wouldn't mind the idea...that one might be a localized appliance which syncs to storage offline somewhere, correct? This would achieve the same thing as our courier-based offsite storage does...getting the data away from us if we get ripped out of the ground by a tornado.

I do know this solution can be a big up-front cost, but it looks like everything is going to be in the thousands and thousands of dollars. I.e. buy the appliance, then buy the maintenance, then buy the month-to-month storage fees. I'd like to get away from the recurring fees as much as possible.

I was always a little confused by the pricing on this though - maybe it's not as bad as I am making it out to be.

pchiodo wrote:

For my setup, I went with disk storage, copied to external HDDs for offsite. We have pretty much what you have minus the exchange.

I setup a 4TB disk array to backup about 1.5TB of total data.

We use Acronis - about $400 a server (8 servers). Here is what I like about it:

Dedup is built-in

Centralized Control Panel

Multiple Vault Locations

Remote Access

Email notifications

Multiple backup methods (GFS, Hanoi Tower, Etc...)

Ability to retain for extended periods

Here is what I am changing in our current setup:

We recently purchased 2 X 12TB ReadyNas devices. I am attaching them to our file server via iSCSI. One is going into our location across the street (fiber connection) and I will replicate to the other ReadyNAS. They support VM and Hyper V, and Acronis supports it as well.

With iSCSI mounting available, we can shoot VSS directly to the ReadyNAS.

So I am moving my backup vaults to the ReadyNAS which will allow me to go well over a year. I will still use the external HDDs for safety deposit box monthly off sites.

Acronis doesn't do anything that other solutions won't do, but it simply makes everything so much easier to manage. In fact, I rarely even look at the control panel anymore, as notifcations tell me everything I need to know. Once I set it all up, it was set it and forget it.

I have had to restore single files and once had to restore an entire server. All with no issues.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want to discuss further.

Thanks, Paul

What kind of disks are you backing up to...is it literally a few external drives that you are saving to and taking offsite? I'm a big fan of Acronis and would like to hear more.

Reading this is sounds like you are describing Unitrends. I think that they meet every one of your criteria, including offsite vaulting, dedupe, multi-agents, licensing by volume rather than by type, etc.

I'm not a backup expert but I've trialed their product and it is what we are planning to move to ourselves.

That they are in the community and have a lot of support and supporters here is a bonus.

@Robb - I use some cheap 1.5 and 2.0 TB USB externals and then just take them offsite. Acronis lets me make a job to copy to the external and I just swap it out on Mondays and take it to the bank, then hook the other one up when I get back.

With compression, I can get about 4 months on one external. I try to keep a year of backups, then I rotate the drives.

My backups run to a RAID array on my backup server. I have enough RAID drive space on the backup server so I can keep 2 months locally and restore files or folders in minutes. If I need something older, I can just get the bank copy and mount the backup right from the external. Restoration is still only minutes, instead of possibly hours with tape.

Once I got through the configuration and got it setup, it really is a hands off backup.

Let me know if you have more questions. I have been using it for about 2 - 1/2 years now.

Reading this is sounds like you are describing Unitrends. I think that they meet every one of your criteria, including offsite vaulting, dedupe, multi-agents, licensing by volume rather than by type, etc.

I'm not a backup expert but I've trialed their product and it is what we are planning to move to ourselves.

That they are in the community and have a lot of support and supporters here is a bonus.

Thanks SAM for bringing us into the conversation. Since Rob Dunn specifically asked Vendors to stay out of this, I only want to let you know that I'm available for any questions you may have about Unitrends.

We purchased, or rather, are in our 30 day grace period for working with AppAssure, and i have to say I LOVE it. It fits every bit of my requirements above, and then some.

We had narrowed it down to either AppAssure or the Barracuda Backup appliance. However, I felt that the Barracuda appliance wasn't quite there yet with features and did not fulfill my requirements above completely (namely the "attach whatever storage I want" parameter).

Why I love it (so far):

I can keep a more up-to-date backup of all servers without impacting performance

Exchange mailbox restores are a breeze - what would take me hours to do (since I'm not very well versed in Exchange restoration procedures) now takes me minutes for mailbox-level restores

I can utilize an additional Replay Core to replication backup data to...so, I don't need to use my SAN spindles to replicate my backups offsite.

Licensing is fantastic. The more virtualized you are, the more cost-effective AppAssure becomes.

I can backup a physical host to a "cold VM" throughout the day, leveraging our existing Hyper-V infrastructure.

I can attach whatever storage amount I need whether directly or simple file shares to store a number of backup repositories.

I don't need Windows Server to run as the central backup manager.

No more long weekend backups, YEAH!

ONE simple to use console. I had no formal training (just a quick webinar) and I was able to find pretty much any option I was looking for.

etc.

You get the idea.

I want to thank everyone here for chiming in, and I will also say that the general comments in the forum about AppAssure directed me to take a long, hard look at the software.

Unitrends looked great, too, but it was a bit price-prohibitive for us.

Unitrends looked great, too, but it was a bit price-prohibitive for us.

I'm intrigued that you found Unitrends to be price-prohibitive for you. Since we have no per anything costs, and our licensing is based upon your data size + retention needs, we typically come in lower than most of our competitors.

With this in mind, I'm concerned that the pricing you may have gotten was inaccurate for your environment. Can you let me know which Unitrends partner you worked with?

I have to sheepishly admit I only got some anecdotal stories of pricing, and it scared me a bit.

Honestly, I don't even remember who the Unitrends rep was...the gentleman I worked with there never really followed up with me any further (which probably made more of an impact more than the pricing) and I wasn't interacting with a reseller yet on any official capacity.

We also wanted to use our own hardware...if I'm not mistaken, isn't the Unitrends solution appliance based?

I have to sheepishly admit I only got some anecdotal stories of pricing, and it scared me a bit.

Honestly, I don't even remember who the Unitrends rep was...the gentleman I worked with there never really followed up with me any further (which probably made more of an impact more than the pricing) and I wasn't interacting with a reseller yet on any official capacity.

We also wanted to use our own hardware...if I'm not mistaken, isn't the Unitrends solution appliance based?

The rep that covers your area is a female, and has been for some time. I do know that she was on medical leave at some point in the last 6 months, with some spotty coverage during her leave, so perhaps your interactions occurred during that leave. I do apologize if the person that was covering for her wasn't 100% committed to getting you the information you needed. It is not our standard practice to have this type of representation, and if anyone experiences this going forward, please let me know.

Unitrends is traditionally physical appliance based, but we do have another option, vRecovery, that lets you utilize your existing hardware. There are a few things to keep in mind with this scenario -

If the hardware that you supply yourself fails, you have to pay to repair or replace it.

Unless you have a spare target for your backups, this could mean some serious downtime. Backups should never experience downtime.

With the physical appliances from Unitrends, since we supply the hardware and software, you only have 1 vendor to work with for your entire backup scenario. This means that should you have a hardware failure, we will replace any hardware overnight.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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